Selling the Whole Pizza

June 8, Monday

SELLING NEW MEDIA: WEB, MOBILE AND APPS-

The News On 6 has five times the web traffic of its nearest competitor, according to local sales manager Derek Criss and interactive sales manager Jill Millaway. The nearest competitor is the Tulsa World newspaper.

I asked how they keep from cannibalizing themselves with web sales people selling against TV sales people. Criss has a simple answer, "We don't." He says they sell as a package with TV, web and mobile offerings together. Millaway, Digital Sales Manager helps the sales people with all aspects of digital media.

PROFIT

Criss says KOTV has the lion’s share of new media sales for television stations in the Tulsa market. They don't share profit figures, but Criss says the website and mobile media are making money.

With more page views than all other media competitors combined, The News On 6 sells a lot of ads and commercials. Millaway and Criss say they are sold out for desktop "prerolls" for the year. A preroll is the commercial that runs before a news video. Criss says the cost of a preroll commercial is $65 per thousand views (CPM).  Note we are just talking about desktop computer page views. The apps and mobile views are sold separately. 

Millaway sets new media sales goals for the sales force and trains them. Sales men and women sell most of the new media inventory themselves. Millaway says they also use  3^rd party for audience extension programs, but there is not much left over for this outside sales agency to sell.  With 43 million page views during the severe weather month of May, the News On 6 sales team is in the enviable position of being able to sell most of their ads themselves--and keep all the money.

Wade Deaver, the Vice-President of Sales for Griffin Communications, says the gross revenue for new media was 2.1 million dollars last year.  That includes the website, thenewson6.com, mobile and apps, local and national sales.